"So your Opera session is more important the corporate security policy?"

As soon as I was informed that I had the worm, I stopped everything and dealt with it. I don't believe I've ever been informed of a "reboot Windows when it asks you to" corporate security policy; though now that you mention it, I see that it's probably a good idea.

Feh. My mistake was not instantly wiping XP when they first handed me my desktop machine. Now I have data and configuration stuff embedded there, making it harder to switch to something good. I should at least P2V it and slip something else underneath.

Time fleets...

"Also wonder about the stability comments. Yes it sometimes crashes, but no more often than competing browsers, and less than some."

Huh.

My Windows XP SP2 box at work got upgraded to SP3 last week.

Why?

Well, it had been asking me to reboot for a while, but I didn't want to disturb my Opera session. I had over 200 tabs open, across 2 windows, and it hadn't crashed since last August.

When it finally did crash, I took the opportunity to update Windows, Opera, Adobe Reader, and a dozen other whiny little annoyances that had been after me for months.

BTW, both Firefox and IE had crashed numerous times during that same period. I've never been able to get FF over about 50 tabs before it loses its mind; sometimes it doesn't even require 2 tabs to take it down.

(Before you ask: yes, it's an even bigger miracle that XP stayed up for that long. I have no explanation.)

The Opera crash came the same day that my company's IT department informed me my box had the Conficker worm. So I was going to have to reboot anyway, then Opera crashed to make it more convenient. Maybe the worm caused the crash.

Of course once I was done upgrading everything in sight, Opera came back up with the same 200 tabs in good order.

This was also the first time in 30+ years of computing that I've ever had a virus or worm. I really didn't want to break that run...

Paris because, well, everybody's doing it....

channelregister hasn't yet been corrupted with the new style sheets etc. What a breath of fresh air.

The list of comment titles at the bottom is sorely missed.

I'll chime in with the thunderous disapproval of the new icons.

And I'll disagree with the two posters who praised the new favicon. It's actually worse than any of the new comment icons. No matter how hard I stare at it telling myself "that's a Reg Vulture", it's still a headless man running with a briefcase.

The fixed width isn't too obnoxious with my current browser window size, though I'm sure I'll grow to vigorously hate it after a while.

Everything else I've seen of the new new seems OK.

Core dump icon just 'cuz nobody else has used it yet in this thread. Plus I'm chasing a mysterious core dump right now.

If they absolutely have to use ActiveX in the browser, the browser should come with a set of "allow bits" -- a list of the specific ActiveX controls that _are_ allowed. That would be crammed in the Registry just like the current "kill bits", and could be modified by MS updates or 3rd party apps that actually _intend_ to add ActiveX controls to the browser's repertoire.

Allowing the browser to invoke random routines from random installed code just because some hacker with a web page knows its CLSID is insane.

How is it that a 3:1 difference in TDP translates to a 1.35:1 difference in power draw? Through the magic of lying on spec sheets?

was a serious question -- I support what she's doing and would poke a few $$ into a Paypal contribute link if I could find it. Anyone know? If she doesn't have one, she should -- there should be plenty of grassroots Internet support...

Go Tanya, let's kick some Ass.!

I need to find the Paypal link...

My experience is the opposite of AC's up there: reghardware articles are beautiful while the rest of The Register is incredibly ugly. Not small, just ugly.

Specifically, ugly when viewed on Opera 9.x under Ubuntu 7.10. It's fine on Opera 9.x under Windows XP, and fine under other browsers. So great, it looks good on every browser except the one I actually use...

I was finally moved to investigate this. Reg articles include this in the HTML:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/style_picker/layout" media="screen, projection" />

For Opera, this ends up loading the style sheet <http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/style/layout/opera.css>. Inside that we find:

body, textarea {

font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

background-repeat: repeat-y;

}

So it prefers Helvetica font to others. Apparently my Ubuntu installs don't have a valid Helvetica font because it looks like, well, Hell. Like an 8x8 pixel font clumsily blown up to to actual 20x20 or so font cell. I tweaked it to "Arial, sans-serif", and now things are beautiful.

To tweak: create "theregister.co.uk.css" somewhere, contents "body, textarea { font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; }". Now right-click on an El Reg page, Edit Site Preferences...; give it the path to the file you just created. Reload page, it should be pretty.

El Reg could perhaps do this themselves when specifically coughing up a style sheet for Opera. The again, Opera ought to handle it better; and Ubuntu ought to include a decent looking font under the "Helvetica" name. Blame all around.

AC could chase down his size problem similarly. (Actually I believe I have some spam laying around here which claims to help with that problem, no wait, better get my coat...)

>Bela<

If you crap up the car, the next driver's going to report you. Yeah, this will piss off StopthePropaganda, live with it. The car knows who last drove it (or at least whose stolen credit card was used). Get a few "trashed the car" reports on your record, your rates will go up, cars that aren't known to already be trashed will refuse your business, your credit rating will drop, stray dogs will disrespect you.

If you're shopping, you'll "put a hold" on the car you're using, park it in a normal spot, leave it locked. You'll pay for the privilege, but the cost will be reasonable.

You don't have to park it in a charger every time you stop. If it's near capacity, you might be able to do things like: park it at home, drive to work the next day, with no charge for having kept it overnight. The "charge" comes in the fact that someone else might have driven it off overnight, you might have to walk to the nearest charging/parking station.

You could also install a home charging station (if the car design is right, this is called an "extension cord"). The car pays you a bit for this service. The payback offsets its cost of not being used by anyone else for the night. Someone can still come by and take it, but they'll end up paying for the charging service you were providing. That is, by offering it an overnight charge you get first dibs on it in the morning.

If too many of them end up in one place, they'll go into discount mode. Drive away from here for free! Just drop it off in one of these 5 general areas which are currently short of cars. Or drive it anywhere else and pay half the normal rate.

Contrariwise, you want to drive into a congested area? That'll cost extra.

It takes a while for a system like this to become really effective. Most don't, but some day, one will become universally effective. Kind of like how there were competing types of electrical service until, eventually, a single type won out in each country.

CP/M was commercially available in 1976, MS-DOS in 1981. So what's your point?

The last release of Opera Bork Edition was 7.0.2, see:

http://arc.opera.com/pub/opera/win/bork/std/ow32enen702build2656_bork.exe

I think there were Linux builds but I don't see one out there today :-(

> Seriously, who uses PiP anyway? Stupid marketing gimmicks

> aside, how is it at all practical for to watch something in the

> corner of the screen with no audio.

I frequently use PiP to play a video game fullscreen, while listening to news (talking head shows) in a small window.

PiP should come with AiA -- audio in audio. On a modern 7.1 type audio setup, you could place the different shows in different spatial locations; I'm pretty sure the brain can process that better than straight mixed audio. Watching 3 shows with spacially separated audio would be like standing between 3 conversations at a party: you pay attention to one, miss most of the other 2, but if someone says something of interest to you, you tend to notice.

AiA could degrade reasonably smoothly on an old stereo setup (can still do some spatial placement with phase alone); and straight mixing on mono would be useful in some cases. Hell, I often wish I could mix two stations on my car stereo -- one talk show + one music show.

I should patent all these ideas instead of giving them away like this. Sheeze. If you design and market something based on these ideas, please at least give me one....